Trent Bridge

Lancashire Inflict Championship Defeat

Match Report | 23rd June 2011

Nottinghamshire slipped to their fourth straight loss in the LV= County Championship when they were defeated by six wickets by Lancashire at Trent Bridge.

Set to score 237 in their second innings, the visitors were guided to victory by a century from opener Stephen Moore, his first for the county.

Nottinghamshire Director of Cricket Mick Newell pinpointed where the game had been lost.

“In our two innings with the bat we’ve found ourselves at 138-6 and then 81-7 so it’s fairly easy to see where out short-comings were,” he said.

“This has been a problem for some time and doesn’t seem to go away. I believe we have the players that are good enough but they need to start showing that they are and start shouldering some responsibility.

“We had periods of control but needed to win that crucial session straight after lunch but didn’t. Things didn’t go for us, we had an lbw shout that we thought was out and dropped a catch and it proved costly in the end.”

With the ECB summoning Samit Patel to attend England training in Bristol, 18 year old Sam Wood was named as his official replacement, thus making one of the more bizarre first class debuts, in that it only constituted one day of play.

Wood was joined on the field by another exciting young prospect, Oliver Swann, fielding for Alex Hales who was nursing a bruised hand.

Requiring a further 205 runs for victory Lancashire began the day on 32-0 under leaden skies.

Openers Stephen Moore and Paul Horton had combined to add 82 in Lancashire’s first innings and again took their stand beyond the half century as Chris Read rotated his seam bowlers. It was Charlie Shreck who made the initial breakthrough, getting Horton (30) caught at slip by David Hussey with the score on 64.

The same bowler then sent back Karl Brown (17) trapped fully in front of his stumps. Mark Chilton almost perished cheaply, striding forward. On one, he pushed back to bowler Paul Franks and was still short of his ground as a shy at the stumps narrowly missed.

The 100 came up for the visitors in the 38th over and Moore completed his fifty shortly afterwards to take his side to lunch on 115-2.

Soon after the re-start Notts were handed an opportunity to get back in the contest but failed to take it. Moore, on 57, cut Franks high to the backward point boundary where Riki Wessels, moving sharply to his left, got both hands to it but spilled the chance.

It proved costly as Moore and Chilton took the game away from the home side adding 90 before Adams got the latter for 35. A full-length delivery trapped the Lancashire captain in his crease and Peter Willey upheld the appeal.

Adams’ first wicket of the contest failed to provide a springboard for further success and another half-century partnership guided the Red Rose county to the brink of victory. Moore had completed his first ton since moving from Worcestershire two years ago and, although he lost Croft to another sharp Hussey catch off Shreck he saw his side to their sixth win of the season.

Sam Wood was given four overs of off-spin from the pavilion end and extracted some significant turn although his debut was to end in the disappointment of defeat.

The loss was Nottinghamshire’s fourth in a row, their worst series of results since 1999 when they twice lost five matches in succession, in a sequence of ten defeats in eleven games.